"There’s nothing quite like a Willie Nelson show. First, it’s the only place to see the patented “Willie wave,” which he is likely to deliver from the stage at any given moment during a song.

"Second, he packs in the hits—a Nelson show is all killer, no filler. Third, these are some of the best songs ever written, in any genre.

"That’s clear from the crazy cross-section of fans that can be found at any given show, a phenomenon that began back in the ‘70s in Austin, where he almost single-handedly united the hippies and the rednecks, a cultural achievement for which he has never been given the Nobel Prize, despite the fact that at the time it ranked somewhere between Nixon going to China and the re-unification of Germany on the scale of improbable cultural accords"